| This study examines Spanish religious oratory from the time of the Council of Trent in the mid-1500's to the end of the nineteenth century. The particular focus of the study is the socio-cultural function of the sermon: its affirmation of, or deviation from, the contemporary discourse of power in light of the perception of change and instability during three "crisis" periods in Spanish history. The analysis first takes into account two different, but highly interrelated modes of sermon production, transmission, and reception: religious oratory as "oral performance" and as "written/printed text". The first chapter draws upon theories of orality and literacy, speech-act theory, and semiotics of drama and the theater to provide a theoretical framework for subsequent chapters. The remaining chapters deal with the changes in the role and function of religious oratory in three distinct historical periods. Sermons are first studied as tools of social manipulation and repression from the time of the Council of Trent to the height of the "culture of crisis" of Baroque Spain (seventeenth century), a period in which the monarchical-seigneurial order sought to reconsolidate its power base. In the eighteenth century, they are examined as part of a project of the State and its enlightened intellectuals to educate the populace for a new role as productive citizens through the filter of a minority aesthetic. Finally, they are analyzed as an instrument in the fight to preserve the Church's traditional role, authority, and status in society being challenged by a liberal, secularized opposition in the first half of the nineteenth century, and as a medium capable of reaching different audiences, including an emerging bourgeoisie and the working classes, in the second half of the nineteenth century. Primary texts analyzed include sermons, "preacher's manuals," treatises on rhetoric and eloquence, and Catholic periodicals, for laymen as well as clergy. |
